Carl Keen: The walking talking miracle in Entiat

ENTIAT - Walking, talking, breathing and driving.

Just a few of the things we take for granted in our everyday life. But what happens to your perspective when you suffer 10 broken ribs, three skull fractures, a fractured back and sinuses and a broken neck and scapula? Do you think your perspective would change then?

It certainly has for Carl Keen from Keen Climate Change in Entiat, who suffered all those ailments after falling over 14 feet onto his head on Aug. 30, 2016.

“If something like this doesn’t change your life, I don’t know what would,” Keen stated in an interview on Friday, June 2. “So many things, I don’t even think about anymore, like all the worrying, we’re all still going to die. It isn’t the two dates of when you were born and day you died on your tombstone that matter, it is that line in between. What did you do with your life ?”

Although Keens ailments stemmed from the fall in August his head was already primed for an injury after a customer blind-sighted him with a mag-light. The case is still on-going, so Keen didn’t reveal much about the incident, but said the hit was substantial enough to keep him on crutches for six weeks and out of work until the end of August. Two days after returning to work, Keen suffered the fall, while up in Okanogan checking on the work his crew had done. Keen woke up, after having major brain surgery, from a coma two weeks later in a hospital bed in Spokane with tubes coming out of him and his wife Lisa by his side.
Lisa, who is the co-owner of Keen Climate Change, sat by his side the entire six weeks Carl was in Spokane recovering.

“When they tell you to say goodbye and that you might not see him again,” Lisa stated before pausing a minute. “I was not going to leave him.”

After waking up, Carl spent the first two days trying to piece together what happened before muttering his first words. Of course, being in a disoriented state, a lot of what he said was gibberish until one day when he asked Lisa what he was doing on that type of ladder?   

“There were so many times, I would think he was coming back and out oh his delusions, but when he asked about the ladder, I knew it was him at that point because he was specific with the ladder he was using that day.”

Carl spent the next couple weeks in St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute relearning how to stand up, walk and move around. Carl - who was abundantly clear in relating is displeasure for hospitals - worked 10 to 12 hour days to try and get his joints and muscles to move as they once did, so he could get signed off and out of the hospital.

“I worked my butt off. They put me and two other guys on stationary bikes and told us to ride as far as we could. The guy on my left rode not even a mile, the guy on right rode a mile and I rode over six miles,” Carl said enthusiastically. “Once I got off I asked if they had any stairs, so I climbed three flights.”

When the therapist came up to congratulate Carl on his progress, Carl had only one response, “get me out of here.” He was not.

After graduating from wheelchair to walker to cane, Carl walked out of the hospital on Oct. 8, or 4-5 months earlier than his doctor predicted upon arriving.

“I knew I would never be the same, but I honestly thought I wasn’t going to make it. There were several guys who got wheeled out of the hospital with a lot less wrong with them than me and they didn’t come back,” Carl unwaveringly said. “Any guy I talked to with a brain injury had incredible speech problems also.”

The doctor even told Lisa that his brain was like a pile of hamburger, because they could not get the blood to stop oozing out of his head.

“I was told that he would be debilitated on his left side and that I would more than likely have to take care of him for the rest of his life,” Lisa said, her voice heavier with each word. “I had an in home nursing business for years, so I knew what I was looking at, as long as he knew who I was, I was okay with that but for a whole week he didn’t know who I was, and he was violent and combative (as a result of sun downers, a common syndrome suffered after surgery) and I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to take care of him myself. But on Sept. 27, the light came on and he knew who I was.”

The one highlight of his stay - other than the day he got to leave - came when his therapist asked him to put together a toy for a kid who was staying in the same ward. Although Carl could not see the boy to give him his present, he put together the game for him knowing the delight it would bring to the kid. Carl’s therapist returned the next day saying he had never seen a kid smile so wide before.

After getting out in October, Carl had to go through cognitive and physical till the first of the year. Sure, he might have limitations from what he used to do, but for Carl and Lisa, that doesn’t matter in the slightest.

“It wasn’t easy and neither one of us will be the same,” Lisa said, glancing over at Carl.

“I used to be able to do a standing back flip, but now I can’t jump since I can’t risk coming down on that injury and I can’t throw my grand kids, but I’m alive,” Carl said as he shifted up in his chair, “that right there is a miracle and a gift, and it is up to me to do the right thing. For whatever reason, I didn’t die, but I’ll find out one of these days hopefully. In the meantime all I can do is be gracious, thankful, and this is a hard one, humble. Last October I would have never thought I would be sitting here in June after getting out of a vehicle driving back from Lake Wenatchee. It was scary, but I just thank the good lord that I’m still here. There is a purpose, I just have to find out what it is.”

Almost a year removed from the incident, Lisa and Carl now laugh when Carl comes home from work with his clothes on backwards and they check in with each other several times throughout the day. Carl will likely have aches and pains for the rest of his life, but he is okay with that knowing he gets to do so with his life partner, who stood by his side through his worst moment.
“That set of vows don’t mean anything when the money is coming in and you are healthy and happy. But when you get hurt, and the first thing you see is your wife and when you close your eyes at night, the last thing you see is your wife and you might not be the nicest guy in the world to be around... Lisa has more than fulfilled those vows and she has more than proven herself, so I’ll probably keep her,” Carl chuckled as he turned and grinned at his wife.

Zach Johnson can be reached at lcmeditor@gmail.com or (509) 682-2213